MasterEffect ReBorn official thread

Is it okay to make a branch of MasterEffect to add these filters?
I am not a fan of branching, due to the different development streams.
However these 2D filters would complete the already available shaders within the suite.

Marty McFly wrote:

Marty McFly wrote: I will only do bugfixes to ME, no new features anymore. All new developments of mine will be Framework exclusive.

But you will be adding features for the ME suite in the Framework?
...because I have a small request (among other big ones ):
could we have the option for SSAO that defines the distance at which foreground obj occludes the background one? (in Raymarch: fRayAOMaxDepth; HBAO: fHBAOAttenuation...).
I really like the SSAO and it's the only viable method IMO for logarithmic depthbuffer. I can't get any of the other methods to look right on log depth...

Yeah, framework will get updates. I'm currently a bit busy but in time, all differences between ME and framework McFX will be migrated and new features added. I am currently working on my own AO, this will be Framework exclusive.

Hello. Is there some way to get Master Effect working with MGS V? I need some very good Ambient Occlusion, but the game only supports SSAO and I need HDAO or Alchemy SAO to get rid of some nasty dark smudges. Apologies if this isn't the thread for this kind of thing, but I've been trying to get it to work for so long I was almost driven insane. In any case I disabled the ingame Ambient Occlusion along with some other effects by chaining the settings located withing the game's main files. Would someone be so kind to help me?

Patrymir wrote: Hello. Is there some way to get Master Effect working with MGS V? I need some very good Ambient Occlusion, but the game only supports SSAO and I need HDAO or Alchemy SAO to get rid of some nasty dark smudges. Apologies if this isn't the thread for this kind of thing, but I've been trying to get it to work for so long I was almost driven insane. In any case I disabled the ingame Ambient Occlusion along with some other effects by chaining the settings located withing the game's main files. Would someone be so kind to help me?

If you have an NVIDIA card you can force HBAO+ in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Check out THIS tweak guide on NVIDIAs site. They claim the performance is similar or better than in-game SSAO.

robgrab wrote:

Patrymir wrote: Hello. Is there some way to get Master Effect working with MGS V? I need some very good Ambient Occlusion, but the game only supports SSAO and I need HDAO or Alchemy SAO to get rid of some nasty dark smudges. Apologies if this isn't the thread for this kind of thing, but I've been trying to get it to work for so long I was almost driven insane. In any case I disabled the ingame Ambient Occlusion along with some other effects by chaining the settings located withing the game's main files. Would someone be so kind to help me?

If you have an NVIDIA card you can force HBAO+ in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Check out THIS tweak guide on NVIDIAs site. They claim the performance is similar or better than in-game SSAO.

The point is I have a pretty good ATI Radeon and absolutely not a single Nvidia graphics card. If I did I would have done that ages ago.

I checked the compatibility list and didn't see an entry for MGS 5 Phantom Pain. I did see a listing for Ground Zeroes but it said it wasn't compatible (crashes). Even if it does work it may not have depth buffer access, which would mean you wouldn't be able to force AO using ReShade.

One of the deciding factors in me choosing an NVIDIA card over ATI specifically was the ability to force HBAO+ in games. I use that feature all the time. It really makes a difference in older games although it's a bit of a dark art trying to find the proper codes to force it to work. NVIDIA doesn't do a very good job of making it plug n play. It's left to the community to figure it out themselves.

I am fully aware of that, but HDAO and Alchemy SAO have proven to be so much more accurate (in quite a few cases) than HBAO which tends to overdo things. Even if I had the option to use HBAO I'm not sure if I'd enable it. Alchemy SAO would have probably been the most perfect for this game and SSAO is just crap.

I guess I'll just have to wait for a release which is going to be more compatible? Or is there any similar effect to AO used by SweetFX and Reshade which I could try?

Patrymir wrote: I am fully aware of that, but HDAO and Alchemy SAO have proven to be so much more accurate (in quite a few cases) than HBAO which tends to overdo things. Even if I had the option to use HBAO I'm not sure if I'd enable it. Alchemy SAO would have probably been the most perfect for this game and SSAO is just crap.

I guess I'll just have to wait for a release which is going to be more compatible? Or is there any similar effect to AO used by SweetFX and Reshade which I could try?

all of them are crap in one thing or another , ssdo is best option tho done right if supported by the game most devs are short on time can cant actually configure any ao to be effective in a game and it just ends up looking like utter ass

What about setting HDR and tonemapping to simulate at least some ambient occlusion? The game already seems to have bloom enabled. I don't think SSDO could be somehow implemented in to Phantom Pain.

How about flipping the image upside down? That will surely simulate AO. Not. Same goes for tonemapping. Btw affecting colors in a stealth game is seldom a good idea. And SSDO is really overrated imho, at least twice slower than AO with same sampling. With fake light direction it looks shitty and almost no game uses it naturally, performance loss doesn't legitimate visual gain. Good regular SSAO with good sampling pattern produces better occlusion than any direction based stuff. All these techniques are approximations, one MAY produce a tiny bit more convincing shadows bit default SSDO implementation is far inferior to Alchemy Ambient Obscuran e because the shadows overall look shitty. ENB also has regular AO but the implementation is so well done that it is far better than any directiom based stuff. Of course, if you mix both worlds, direction based stuff and good sampling pattern, you get a better result, yes but something like that isn't available (yet). I wasted a huge time inventing some intelligent sampling pattern to produce convincing AO so you get the directional stuff with good shadows and color bouning but it's still wip. However all those injected versions are inferior to an included AO because our AO is always an overlay for final image but it must be applied to ambient color and so on. Boris Vorontsov wrote a good text about that matter.

Apologies for my writing, smartphone limitations

I guess you know more about this then most people so here's the problem:

international.download.nvidia.com/geforc...s-vs-extra-high.html

Just look at the characters with SSAO and without it. The game is truly in need of some decent AO. At this point I don't even care which one it is. If your SSAO setting can avoid creating that black, semi transparent smudge it would be a big step forward. Unfortunately MasterEffect is still not compatible at the time is it? What makes the matter worse is that adding SweetFX make the matter even worse. It just brings out the smudge so much more it's like walking in a thick mist all the time. If it could only be disabled for the characters I'd be a happy man!

Patrymir wrote: I guess you know more about this then most people so here's the problem:

international.download.nvidia.com/geforc...s-vs-extra-high.html

Just look at the characters with SSAO and without it. The game is truly in need of some decent AO. At this point I don't even care which one it is. If your SSAO setting can avoid creating that black, semi transparent smudge it would be a big step forward. Unfortunately MasterEffect is still not compatible at the time is it? What makes the matter worse is that adding SweetFX make the matter even worse. It just brings out the smudge so much more it's like walking in a thick mist all the time. If it could only be disabled for the characters I'd be a happy man!

Well the AO used there isn't very accurate. It's basic AO mistake, objects shadow correctly in left/right, top/bottom direction but depth is totally distorted, objects that are 50m away from each other cause shadowing on each other. More advanced algorithms take care of that, see HBAO+ but HBAO+ has a way too low sampling range, like almost every out of the box solution so on your pic, it's just a thin line. Any AO from MasterEffect/McFX can do more defined and more accurate AO. You say ME isn't compatible...do you mean ReShade cannot run on it or what? I have MGSV Phantom Pain so I can test but I assumed it wouldn't work because ReShade doesn't run on Ground Zeroes and both games use the same engine.

SweetFX and Reshade run fine. Here are a few examples:

sfx.thelazy.net/games/game/1094/

SweetFX game notes:
This game is for now only compatible with ReShade 0.10 + SweetFX ( www.dropbox.com/sh/jzn2jsb0zt55ci3/AACTH....0%20Preview.7z?dl=0 ).

Some better ones are on the Nexus. Like:

www.nexusmods.com/metalgearsolidvtpp/mods/3/ ?

They also work, but when I try adding MasterEffect it's not gonna run because it would need a higher version.

Come to think of it if it's just an algorithm and the game archives can be unpacked... would it be possible to just change the algorithm in the game files? Most stuff is in lua anyway.

Depends if shaders are precompiled or not. Old crysis 1 had shader source code but now they are compiled in crysis 2 and 3. But if they are available in source code, altering it is surely possible. And ME is meant to be used with latest ReShade version. Also because of its size. Old ReShade supported max. 16 texture samplers (the Shader Model 3 limitations) but newer ones disable all unused samplers per pass. And ME has much more than 16 samplers.

EDIT: Major cleaning of first post.

Like I mentioned - most of the stuff is in lua and some files have the fsop extension. I'm looking at the shader folder right now.

Here are lua files:
www.filedropper.com/shaders

Not sure which one of them would contain the code to be honest. I'm no programmer.

Well, those are extremely messy (just open them in the texteditor, you'll see). Opening them with Notepad++ or anything else that doesn't need both carriage return and line feed to make a wordwrap results in one big ass line so formatting them to make them editable properly takes an eternity. Not guaranteed that any of those contain the actual AO code. Plus I'm no LUA expert (although LUA is pretty straightforward but still).

From what I know they have all the graphical settings for the game. You can literally mod anything with the ingame lua files. The other files (4 of them) take up a lot of the space. I doubt a simple AO code would be in them. I also opened them in ++ but I have absolutely no idea what's what or where to start. Do you have any idea what file is responsible for the AO at least?

Dear Marty,

I didn't play with your shader pack for a couple of months, and after I download latest version(and couple before try to) I notice that you change totally lensflare and Chapman's lens, which is my favorite and use it before in couple of games.
For example right now Chapman lens are totally wrong and it not present what need to be.

One of the best chapman lens and lens flare are in your old version 1.0.340. There is perfect both of those effects, only thing what is missing in that old version is slightly blur of this effects.

Once again, maybe I am wrong, and I don't know how to setup this, but this is shader of chapman original look, and how it need to be, and honestly I expect to see this in your pack.


If someone know how to do it, with simple settings of MasterEffect, it will be my pleasure.

Best regards!

I did not change chapman lens code at all, only the post blur and the texture overlay (which is suggestion from chapman blog anyways). So config values have the same effect,, only thing that may alter the look os the lens mask and getting rid of that is easy.